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SOLIDWORKS - How to Copy and Paste Part Features

Reusing part features from your SOLIDWORKS Design Library is a great way to efficiently design in SOLIDWORKS. However, what if you wanted to quickly reuse a favorite feature and bypass the SOLIDWORKS Design Library? A great technique is to “copy and paste” that feature1. In the example shown below, I want to copy this cylindrical boss feature (circled in red) to another area of this part model.

1 Note: There are several “copy and paste” techniques which involves turning “on” and “off” Instant3D.

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Instant3D Off While holding down the Ctrl key, mouse-click (select & hold) the feature you would like to copy from the Feature Manager Design Tree, then drag and drop that feature to a planar face of where you want to copy that feature to (ref. 1). Alternatively, you can select the feature from the Display Area using the same technique (ref. 2).

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Instant3D Off (continued) Another technique is to utilize the Windows shortcut keys of Ctrl+C (for Copy) of the original feature, then select a planar face of where you want to paste to using Ctrl+V (Paste). Alternatively, we can also use the Edit > Copy or Edit > Paste from the Menu Bar pull-downs using the same technique (see below).

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Instant3D On While holding down the Ctrl key, mouse-click (select & hold) the Instant3D “Sphere”, then drag and drop that feature to a planar face of where you want to copy that feature to.

Detail of Instant3D “Sphere”

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Other considerations… To move a feature with Instant3D turned on, mouse-click (select & hold) the Instant3D Sphere (without Ctrl button) and simply drag (move) it to another edge/face. To move a feature with Instant3D turned off, holding down the Shift key, mouse-click (select & hold) that feature and move it to a different planar face in the Display Area. Additionally, using Ctrl+X (Cut) and Ctrl+V (Paste) under the same circumstances as described above will yeild the same results when moving features. Since these copied features are not parametrically linked, if changes are made to the original feature it has no effect on the newly copied feature. This applies to Extruded Boss/Base, Extrude-Cut, Fillets and Chamfers, Revolved Boss/Base and Hole Wizard Holes. If external relations are utilized in the original feature, the following message will pop up (see right). At this time point, the three choices given are:

1. Delete the relationship. 2. Keep it even though it is unresolved (dangling). 3. Cancel the copy operation.

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Copy and Paste from one part to another Yet another great function is to copy features from one part file to another. Utilizing the Ctrl+drag method, we need to access both windows simultaneously as shown (Window > Tile Horizontally, or Window > Tile Vertically – see below)